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The NFL does a tremendous job of attracting the life long fan - heart and soul. People emotionally live and die by their teams. Some even tattoo their bodies, paint their vehicles, decorate their houses, and spend a ton of money on tickets, travel, and apparel. 

 

For a life long fan - especially of a perennial losing team - vindication comes in the form of winning a championship. Crowned the best team beating all post season contenders put in front of them.

 

So here's the weird thought that came to me - how awful is to put all this emotion into a team your entire life and never get the joy of a Super Bowl victory. There must be life long Bengals fans that have passed away and never got that vindication. Ugh. How freakin' awful. Just saw the stat that the Vikings and Bills are both 0-4 in the Super Bowl. That's some life long pain.

 

Okay, I'll get off the morbid soapbox. Enjoy your day.

 

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14 minutes ago, Harley said:

The NFL does a tremendous job of attracting the life long fan - heart and soul. People emotionally live and die by their teams. Some even tattoo their bodies, paint their vehicles, decorate their houses, and spend a ton of money on tickets, travel, and apparel. 

 

For a life long fan - especially of a perennial losing team - vindication comes in the form of winning a championship. Crowned the best team beating all post season contenders put in front of them.

 

So here's the weird thought that came to me - how awful is to put all this emotion into a team your entire life and never get the joy of a Super Bowl victory. There must be life long Bengals fans that have passed away and never got that vindication. Ugh. How freakin' awful. Just saw the stat that the Vikings and Bills are both 0-4 in the Super Bowl. That's some life long pain.

 

Okay, I'll get off the morbid soapbox. Enjoy your day.

 

 

I've had this though many times and it's a scary proposition.  I feel a little more hopeful going forward after this season.

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42 minutes ago, Harley said:

The NFL does a tremendous job of attracting the life long fan - heart and soul. People emotionally live and die by their teams. Some even tattoo their bodies, paint their vehicles, decorate their houses, and spend a ton of money on tickets, travel, and apparel. 

 

For a life long fan - especially of a perennial losing team - vindication comes in the form of winning a championship. Crowned the best team beating all post season contenders put in front of them.

 

So here's the weird thought that came to me - how awful is to put all this emotion into a team your entire life and never get the joy of a Super Bowl victory. There must be life long Bengals fans that have passed away and never got that vindication. Ugh. How freakin' awful. Just saw the stat that the Vikings and Bills are both 0-4 in the Super Bowl. That's some life long pain.

 

Okay, I'll get off the morbid soapbox. Enjoy your day.

 

I had a brief experience with that sort of joy—with the ‘74 and ‘75 Flyers. They haven’t won since. 

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Well, by enjoying the ride.  This season was a great ride.  Next few should be as well. 

 

Do I want to see the Bengals win a Super Bowl?  Of course!  But, I would rather see them be a force for decades than win one Super Bowl and slip back into being shitty again for years. 

 

Enjoy the ride!

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1 minute ago, Le Tigre said:

I had a brief experience with that sort of joy—with the ‘74 and ‘75 Flyers. They haven’t won since. 

 

'06 Hurricanes were lightning in a bottle, but back to losing in a couple years.  This squad (current Hurricanes) is much more entertaining even if they never win the cup. 

 

Same goes for these Bengals.  What a bunch of good guys who play hard.  I think they are going to win it soon, but if they don't it's OK.  I'm going to enjoy this.

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37 minutes ago, UncleEarl said:

 

'06 Hurricanes were lightning in a bottle, but back to losing in a couple years.  This squad (current Hurricanes) is much more entertaining even if they never win the cup. 

 

Same goes for these Bengals.  What a bunch of good guys who play hard.  I think they are going to win it soon, but if they don't it's OK.  I'm going to enjoy this.

So hate to say this because I am superstitious and don't want to jinx anything but one thing that led to the Bengals success this year was the lack of injuries to key players for any length of time, anyway.  I do believe that is a key and possibly overlooked piece of every winning season.  And I do watch the injury list throughout the season.

 

That said, I more than hope the injury free stuff continues.

 

And I am looking for the addition of Joseph Ossai to the D next year.

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3 hours ago, Harley said:

The NFL does a tremendous job of attracting the life long fan - heart and soul. People emotionally live and die by their teams. Some even tattoo their bodies, paint their vehicles, decorate their houses, and spend a ton of money on tickets, travel, and apparel. 

 

For a life long fan - especially of a perennial losing team - vindication comes in the form of winning a championship. Crowned the best team beating all post season contenders put in front of them.

 

So here's the weird thought that came to me - how awful is to put all this emotion into a team your entire life and never get the joy of a Super Bowl victory. There must be life long Bengals fans that have passed away and never got that vindication. Ugh. How freakin' awful. Just saw the stat that the Vikings and Bills are both 0-4 in the Super Bowl. That's some life long pain.

 

Okay, I'll get off the morbid soapbox. Enjoy your day.

 

Take it from personal experience,  it’s a lot better to get there than to be the Browns or Lions.  
 

The Saints’ franchise began 1 year before the Bengals.  By the time the Saints won their first playoff game, the Bengals had been to 2 Super Bowls.  34 years to win a playoff game.  
 

They didn’t have a winning season for their first  21 years.  It was brutal.  Zero hope for a long time.  
 

Losing 3 Super Bowls is frustrating but would you rather be the Lions, Browns, Dolphins ir Raiders? 
 

The Dolphins have won 2 but haven’t been relevant in 20 years.  The  Raiders have 3 rings but haven’t won a playoff game in 20 years.   Both don’t look likely to improve next year. 
 

I like our trajectory.  

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Of course I want my favorite team of any sport to win it all.  But realistically just making the final game or even final four is all I hope for.  After that there are too many variables....injuries, good refereeing, level of play and even luck is involved.

 

Am I emotional after the game?  Sure I am.

 

After this one I am more pissed than usual.  I should have know that Roger was not going to let his friend Rams owner Creepy Stan lose this one. 

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1 hour ago, westside bengal said:

Of course I want my favorite team of any sport to win it all.  But realistically just making the final game or even final four is all I hope for.  After that there are too many variables....injuries, good refereeing, level of play and even luck is involved.

 

Am I emotional after the game?  Sure I am.

 

After this one I am more pissed than usual.  I should have know that Roger was not going to let his friend Rams owner Creepy Stan lose this one. 

Exactly.

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1 hour ago, westside bengal said:

Of course I want my favorite team of any sport to win it all.  But realistically just making the final game or even final four is all I hope for.  After that there are too many variables....injuries, good refereeing, level of play and even luck is involved.

 

Am I emotional after the game?  Sure I am.

 

After this one I am more pissed than usual.  I should have know that Roger was not going to let his friend Rams owner Creepy Stan lose this one. 

We had plenty of chances to extend our lead in the 3rd and 4th quarter.  Our Oline simply couldn’t protect Joe or create holes for the other Joe.  
 

Gotta fix the right side of the o line period. 

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I'm a 36 year old Australian. I picked the Bengals 21 years ago for a specific reason, I wanted the journey. I wanted to experience what it was like for a life long fan to be emotionally invested for the long haul.

 

I have no affiliation with any cities in the US, so it would've been easy to tag along with one of the big dogs. But I'm glad I didn't. I'm glad to be attached to this fanbase. It's everything that I am.

 

We all know what a roller-coaster this franchise has been, with lots of bumps, bruises and tears along the way. Would've been easy to hit the emergency stop button and ask to get off on multiple occasions. But I wouldn't change anything.

 

The sombre pride I felt at the end of the Superbowl was magical. Of course you want the result to be different. Of course you don't want it to be true. But I'm still so damn proud. Emotionally exhausted but already counting down the days until football season.

 

Maybe it is like the Pot of Gold at the end of the rainbow, maybe it is just a fantasy. It is for a lot of franchises across the big 4. But damn we have an exciting brand of football and I think we have a good as shot as any moving forward.

 

I feel for everyone who has that daunting thought of potentially never winning the big one. Hopefully it's just that, a thought and not a reality. But I think being a fan of this team is pretty magical and watching these kids go about it the right way is better than any fair-weather hollow victory I could've had by jumping ship somewhere else.

 

Let's get it.

 

WHO DEEEEEYYYYYY!!!!!!!

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8 hours ago, Harley said:

The NFL does a tremendous job of attracting the life long fan - heart and soul. People emotionally live and die by their teams. Some even tattoo their bodies, paint their vehicles, decorate their houses, and spend a ton of money on tickets, travel, and apparel. 

 

For a life long fan - especially of a perennial losing team - vindication comes in the form of winning a championship. Crowned the best team beating all post season contenders put in front of them.

 

So here's the weird thought that came to me - how awful is to put all this emotion into a team your entire life and never get the joy of a Super Bowl victory. There must be life long Bengals fans that have passed away and never got that vindication. Ugh. How freakin' awful. Just saw the stat that the Vikings and Bills are both 0-4 in the Super Bowl. That's some life long pain.

 

Okay, I'll get off the morbid soapbox. Enjoy your day.

 

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The five stages of grief. When the ball hit the ground on 4th and 1, I was overcome with anger and depression instantly. I'm still not even close to right. A big part of that is the fact that I may never see a championship for the team I love. The funny thing is, I've been fine with that for many years, but once they got close, I realized how badly I wanted them to get it. I didn't sleep Sunday, and I didn't sleep particularly well last night. That's when the denial part kicked in, going over the late blown call, the inability to gain a yard, what if, what if. Like if I thought about it hard enough, something might change. There's no bargaining, it's not like my wife died. I'm actually close to my kind of acceptance, accepting it happened and nothing can change it. I'm not okay with it. Never will be. I'm still not okay with the 80's Super Bowl losses. I'm probably a pretty immature 53 year old, lol. 

 

On the flip side. Man did this team overachieve this year! We basically came within a play of winning the Super Bowl with a terrible o line. Who does that! Spectacular skill players on offense, and good players on defense who somehow coalesced into a great unit. Especially down the stretch. Nothing can take away the joy of winning 3 playoff games after such a long drought. Will the team make the right moves and be better next year? Nothing in life is guaranteed, that's part of the pain of coming up short this year, but I sure hope so. 

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I guess what I’m simply saying is that every life long fan deserves that one moment of championship joy. It would be sad to root for a team so hard for 60, 70, or 80 years and never get it. For MLB and NFL fans it’s a real possibility it escapes them. 
 

I’m no Jack Handy. 

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32 minutes ago, Harley said:

Is anything short of a Super Bowl appearance next year a failure?

Not at all. It depends on injuries, calls etc. Josh Allen or Pat Mahomes may catch fire

 

If we're now worried about winning a SB rather than winning a playoff game then we've come a long way

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41 minutes ago, Sea Ray said:

Not at all. It depends on injuries, calls etc. Josh Allen or Pat Mahomes may catch fire

 

If we're now worried about winning a SB rather than winning a playoff game then we've come a long way

 

Expectations are a funny thing. We tasted the final game and all that comes with it. Like that taste.

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